Sina Maganda at Malakas Picture

I got so mad at a photo op that was supposedly of Malakas and Maganda that whitewashed these characters of Filipino mythology to be represented by white people. So I did a quick sketch and colored it in Photoshop. I would have done a vector drawing, but I feel anger is best worked out in Photoshop rather than inkscape.

Malakas and Maganda are the ancestors of Filipinos according to the Tagalog creation story. Other Filipino creation stories exist in other Philippine ethnic groups.

When Bathala (God) was done creating the world, he was bored. He looked down over the earth and sent a bird into the world. The bird was flying around when it heard some sounds and tapping somewhere in the forest.The bird landed and found out that the sound is coming from a huge bamboo. He started pecking on it and pretty soon it split in the middle where a man came out of it. His name was Malakas, which means strong, and he told the bird, "My mate is in the other piece of wood." They got her out and her name was Maganda which means beautiful. The two got on the bird's back and flew away to find some place to live. They went flying around the world, and then finally, the bird saw a land and let the two giants set foot and live on it. When Malakas and Maganda stepped on the land their weight separated the land into islands (Philippines has 7,200 islands). Malakas and Maganda live on and produced millions of children, which came to be the Filipinos.

(story taken from bambooman)

I've always pictured Maganda as a woman of Negrito heritage since my mom always told me that Negritos were the first settlers of the Philippines. So I depicted her as such here.